Justice

Recidivism Indicators

There is no standardized definition or method of calculating “recidivism”, i.e. the rate at which people become re-involved in criminal activity. Correctional services generally calculate recidivism statistics to serve internal management purposes. In Manitoba, we calculate recidivism as occurring when a person is convicted of a new offence and is returned to provincial custody within two years of release from jail or other correctional supervision. We gather recidivism data quarterly, which means that our method of calculation counts the number of people whose sentences expired two years earlier and who were re-convicted in the three month time period we’re looking at. When reviewing the quarterly data, it is important to keep in mind that one individual could be re-convicted more than once over the two years since they were first released from jail or supervision so a single person may be included in multiple quarterly reports. However, we do not believe that this occurs often enough to meaningfully affect the overall results. Other jurisdictions use different measurement criteria, and so their recidivism rate will look very different from ours.